


The Funny Thing About Crushes

by Bookworm1063



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Gen, demiromantic Ronan Lynch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-16
Updated: 2021-02-16
Packaged: 2021-03-18 20:32:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29495850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bookworm1063/pseuds/Bookworm1063
Summary: The thing was, Ronan had already had his sexuality crisis. He was gay. End of story. So what, if he’d apparently had fewer crushes than everyone else? It was probably just the repression. Besides, he had a boyfriend, who he loved, so it didn’t matter.Did it?Ronan realizes he can't remember ever having a crush on someone before Adam, prompting a small identity crisis.
Relationships: Ronan Lynch & Blue Sargent, Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish
Comments: 6
Kudos: 91





	The Funny Thing About Crushes

“Blue,” Adam said. He was sitting cross-legged in front of a bookshelf in Ronan’s living room, unpacking his box of books onto the lowest shelf. “Did you know we went to the same elementary school?”

“Yes,” Blue said. “You didn’t? We were in the same third grade class.”

Adam lifted an old, battered yearbook. Ronan reached over and plucked in from his hand.

“Be careful with that,” Adam said. “It’s the only one I have.”

“I will.” Ronan flipped through the pages. He’d been homeschooled until Aglionby, so he had never been to a regular, public elementary school. Every kid in the photos looked completely miserable, so he didn’t think he’d missed much.

Sure enough, Adam and Blue both had their individual portraits printed on Miss Wallace’s class page.

“So you’ve known each other longer than any of us,” Ronan said. “Fucking unbelievable. Gansey’s gonna be devastated when he finds out.”

Blue rolled her eyes. “I’ve definitely mentioned it to him at least once.”

Adam moved from the floor to sit next to Ronan on the sofa and peer over his shoulder. “Oh, my god. Blue, you remember Katy Smith? She was such an asshole.”

“I remember,” Blue said. Ronan frowned at her, and she explained, “Katy would always walk around with this group of, like, three other girls. They were horrible to everyone who wasn’t part of their group. Like the worst kind of cliché. If you weren’t their friend, they didn’t want to know you. I had a huge crush on Katy’s sister Morgan, actually. Then I realized I could do better.”

Adam laughed. “Everyone had a crush on Morgan. _I_ had a crush on Morgan.”

“You have no taste, though,” Blue said.

“Excuse you,” Ronan said. “I am a fucking amazing boyfriend.”

“Yeah,” Adam agreed. He leaned over to kiss Ronan on the cheek.

_“Anyway,”_ Blue said. “The only thing that made Morgan any different from Katy was that she made her own jewelry. It was cool. That was the entire reason I liked her. I thought she was _artsy._ ” Blue snorted. “Third grade me was an idiot.”

“The entire reason?” Ronan asked. “Weren’t you guys friends?”

Blue and Adam stared at each other.

“No?” Blue said, but it sounded like a question. “No, she hung out with Katy and those other girls. I just, you know, liked her from afar.”

“Yeah,” Adam agreed. “I mean, I wasn’t the sort of person Morgan ever would have given so much as the time of day too. Blue, I can’t believe we had the same first crush.”

“Pretty lame first crush,” Blue agreed.

Ronan thought back, trying to remember who his own first crush had been. He couldn’t think of one.

Adam shifted so he was lying down, his head in Ronan’s lap. Blue went into the kitchen, made herself a cup of tea, and sat in one of the big leather armchairs. The conversation moved on.

o-o-o-o-o

Ronan had just gotten back inside when his front door slammed open, loud enough to wake the dead. Ronan swore and stomped through the house, leaving mud and leaves tracked across the family room.

“Don’t you ever fucking knock?” he asked Blue. She shook her head. 

“You’re the one who gave me a key, Ronan.”

“That doesn’t mean you can just let yourself in whenever you want.”

“That’s exactly what it means. Is Adam here?”

“No, he’s at work.” Ronan reached past Blue to lock the front door. “What do you want, Sargent?”

“Nothing,” Blue said.

Ronan shook his head and made his way back towards the kitchen. Blue trailed after him.

“Why, was I interrupting something?”

“I just finished with the animals,” Ronan said. He’d spend the morning the same way he always did, making sure all the cows were fed and milked.

“So I didn’t interrupt,” Blue said. “Cool. I need help with a school project.”

Ronan sighed. “Why the hell are you asking me for help with school? Ask Parrish. Or Gansey.”

“I came to ask Adam. He’s working,” Blue pointed out. “Seriously. My Government teacher is the worst. She wants a five-page paper arguing for or against life terms for Supreme Court Justices by Tuesday.”

Ronan blinked down at Blue. “Well, shit. I’ll make hot chocolate.”

o-o-o-o-o

“I think we’re good here,” Blue said, three hours later. She had her feet propped up on Ronan’s coffee table and her laptop open on her lap. “I don’t think I agree with half of what I said, but I had to work a founding document in as evidence, and this was the best way I could think to do it.” Blue shook her head. “AP essays, man.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Ronan said.

“Right, because you never did your homework.”

“I never took AP classes, either. I don’t have a death wish.”

Blue rolled her eyes and took a sip of her hot cocoa. It had to be stone cold by now, but Ronan didn’t say anything.

“Blue?” Ronan asked.

“Yeah?”

“You remember that conversation you had with Parrish the other day, about your first crush?”

“Yes.” Blue set her mug down and turned to face Ronan. “What about it?”

The truth was, Ronan had been thinking about that conversation on and off for almost a week now. He didn’t even know why, just that something about it had gotten under his skin.

“Did you really not know that girl well? Morgan?”

“Not at all,” Blue said.

“And you really liked her?”

“I guess?” Blue shrugged. “I don’t know, I was eight. It was puppy love. I got over it.”

“But she was your first crush,” Ronan said. “How many crushes have you had? Lifetime total.”

“I don’t know,” Blue said. “I wasn’t exactly counting. Are you asking about, like, classmates, celebrities, what?”

“You had a thing for a celebrity?” Ronan shook his head. He didn’t even know the names of most celebrities, so there was no point asking.

“I think most people do, a little bit.” Blue tilted her head to the side, watching him. “Ronan. What is this really about?”

“Nothing,” Ronan said. He wasn’t lying, technically. “It’s about absolutely fucking nothing.” 

o-o-o-o-o

The thing was, Ronan had already had his sexuality crisis. He was gay. End of story. So what, if he’d apparently had fewer crushes than everyone else? It was probably just the repression. Besides, he had a boyfriend, who he loved, so it didn’t matter.

Did it?

Ronan put it out of his mind as best he could. He fed the cows, and spent time with his friends, and argued with Declan a few times over the phone. The whole thing was completely ignored for almost a month.

Then Gansey, of all people, brought it up again.

It was a Friday night. Gansey had come over earlier that afternoon to hang out, and he hadn’t left yet. He and Ronan were sitting on the couch in the living room, Gansey with a book, Ronan with a notepad, pencil, and a half-formed list of things he’d need to order for the farm.

“Ronan,” Gansey said. “Blue told me about your conversation a few weeks ago.”

“I talk to Blue all the time, be more specific,” Ronan grunted.

“The one about… crushes.”

“I don’t want to talk about this,” Ronan said. He shoved his notepad to the edge of the coffee table.

“I’m sorry if this is crossing a line.”

“You’re not,” Ronan said. “I just don’t want to fucking talk about it.”

“That’s your choice,” Gansey said, and he sounded so calm and put-together, Ronan wanted to punch him. “But if you do want to talk, I think I can relate to what you’re going through.”

“I’m not—I’m not questioning anything,” Ronan sputtered. “Been there, done that, very gay, got the fucking tee shirt.”

“Alright,” Gansey said. He left it alone after that.

Once Gansey finally left, Ronan took a shower and went to bed early. Adam was staying at St. Agnes that night, so Ronan was alone with his thoughts.

It was probably nothing. Ronan was stressing himself out for no reason. He rolled over, closed his eyes, and tried to dream.

o-o-o-o-o

The next morning, after he’d fed the cows, Ronan locked the doors at the Barns and took his car out on the roads. He hadn’t promised not to street race, so he didn’t feel bad about the hours he was about to spend doing it.

o-o-o-o-o

When he got back to the Barns, Adam was sitting on the front porch.

“You have a key,” Ronan called as he slammed the door of the BMW shut. “You could have gone in.”

“I was waiting for you.” Adam stood, stretched, and crossed the lawn to Ronan’s side. He took his hand and leaned his head against Ronan’s shoulder. “Talk to me.”

“I love you,” Ronan said. He didn’t say it often, at least not without excessive swearing involved, but he wanted to make sure Adam knew.

“I know,” Adam said. “I love you, too.”

“What would you say,” Ronan began, then shook his head. He tugged Adam around the BMW and climbed up onto the hood, leaning back against the windshield. Adam joined him, and Ronan put his arm around Adam’s shoulders.

“What would you think,” Ronan started again, “If I told you—fuck. I think you were my first crush. Besides Gansey, I mean.”

“You had a thing for Gansey too, huh?” Adam said.

“Please,” Ronan said. “I think Cheng is the only person in this friend group who hasn’t been half in love with Gansey at some point, and that’s because Cheng doesn’t do the romance thing.”

Adam didn’t say anything, letting Ronan gather his thoughts.

“It doesn’t matter,” Ronan said. “Apparently most people, you know, _like_ people more than I did. Or some shit like that.”

Adam propped himself up on one elbow and looked down at Ronan. “This is bothering you, so it matters.”

Ronan scoffed and rolled his eyes.

“I’m serious,” Adam said.

“I know,” Ronan said. “I just don’t know _why_ it matters.”

Adam slid back down on the windshield of the car. If the situation was different, Ronan thought, Adam probably would have said something about how Ronan needed to take better care of his cars, and that meant not sitting on them.

“I mean,” Adam said, pressing his shoulder against Ronan’s. “This isn’t really my area of expertise. Maybe you should talk to Gansey. He knows more about this kind of thing than I do.”

Ronan knew that as soon as Adam had some free time and access to the internet, he’d be making sure he knew exactly as much, if not more, than Gansey did.

“I’ll think about it,” Ronan said.

o-o-o-o-o

Ronan had told Adam he’d think about it, so he thought about it.

The problem was, there was very little to think about. 

Still, he drove over to Monmouth Manufacturing a few days later, when he knew Gansey would be there by himself. Henry had moved in with Gansey for the last few months of the school year, but Ronan knew Henry had some student government meeting to hammer out graduation details.

“Hello, Ronan,” Gansey said. He was sitting on the floor, working on his Henrietta model. As Ronan watched, he carefully placed a tiny cardboard staircase outside a tiny cardboard general store.

“This shit looks exhausting,” Ronan said. “Why do you do it? Probably someone’s just going to step on it again.” 

“I like having my own little world,” Gansey said. Ronan couldn’t relate. He had his own infinite world in his dreams.

“Parrish said I should talk to you,” Ronan said. He didn’t want to have this conversation, but since he was already there, he figured he might as well get the ball rolling.

“About what?”

“I don’t fucking know. He thought it was a good idea for some goddamn reason.”

“This is about our conversation from the other week,” Gansey said. “Isn’t it?”

Ronan sighed. “I think everyone’s blowing this way the fuck out of proportion.”

“We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” Gansey pointed out. When Ronan didn’t say anything, Gansey continued with a small smile on his face.

“You should do some research.”

“ _Research?”_ Ronan groaned. “Gansey, there’s a reason I fucking dropped out of high school.” 

“I know,” Gansey said. “It’s just, when I was figuring out my own identity, I found it helpful to read about other people’s experiences and labels. You don’t have to, of course,” he said, catching sight of the look on Ronan’s face. “But, you know, I went through something similar.”

“I’m not demisexual,” Ronan said. “I don’t know how to put this, but… _definitely_ not.”

“I don’t want to know,” Gansey said. “All of the labels I looked at for myself have an equivalent, for romantic attraction. If that’s something you wanted to look into.”

Ronan hadn’t known that. He was also seriously considering throwing himself out the window to escape this conversation. He regretted driving to Monmouth in the first place. He regretted getting out of bed that morning. 

“That’s the thing, though,” he said. “I already know who I like, romantically. Boys. Parrish.”

“Not being alloromantic wouldn’t automatically make you any less gay,” Gansey said. “You could be both.”

Ronan’s head was spinning, so he stood up and walked out. He took the BMW out on the streets, raced five different people, and ended up with a long scratch down the passenger side of his car.

o-o-o-o-o

The next morning, Ronan went out to take a look at his car, but he didn’t actually know anything about car repair. He hadn’t seen Adam yet that day, so there was no one for him to ask. One of the barns in the back was full of his father’s old tools, but Ronan didn’t know what any of them were called, let alone how to use them.

Ronan stomped back into the house and dug his cell phone out from between the couch cushions. Declan had recently sent him a new model of smartphone that Ronan had no idea how to use, but he did know he could look things up on it. He wasn’t so hopeless that he couldn’t figure out how to repair a dented car door. 

When he switched the screen on, he saw a series of unread texts from Gansey. The first few were all links to different websites.

_I’ve attached some resources above if you’re interested. Let me know if they’re helpful!_

Ronan threw his phone onto his favorite armchair. He’d use the computer instead.

o-o-o-o-o

Everyone left Ronan alone for the next week.

Not really alone, of course—Adam was still at the Barns nearly every day, helping Ronan cook and teaching him how to take care of his cars and kissing him on the cheek when there was no one else around to see them being saps. Gansey called a couple of times, and Ronan drove into Henrietta to see him twice. Blue showed up on Monday morning with a truck full of tree saplings. Ronan didn’t know where she’d gotten them from, but he helped her plant them along the edge of the Barns property.

It was as Ronan was stashing the gardening tools in the shed that Opal got on his case.

“Kerah is sad,” Opal said. She wasn’t asking, merely making an observation.

“I’m not sad,” Ronan said. “I’ve got no fucking reason to be sad.”

Opal tilter her head at him. She was perched up on top of one of the old dream tractors that had also stopped working when Niall Lynch had died, and Chainsaw was clinging on to the side mirror next to her. It was creepy as fuck, and Ronan was about to say so when Opal said, “Not sad. Confused.”

Ronan didn’t lie, so he said nothing.

Opal hopped down from the tractor and wrapped her arms around Ronan’s legs. “It’s okay,” she crooned.

Ronan wasn’t going to cry. He wasn’t going to cry. He wasn’t going to cry.

That’s where Adam found him, almost an hour later—sitting on the barn’s dusty floor, Opal half in his lap, petting his arm while he told himself not to cry. 

When Opal saw Adam, she scampered over and tugged on his hand. “Kerah needs you.”

“I know,” Adam said. “Thank you, Opal.”

Opal vanished into the shadows, and Adam sat down next to Ronan. Ronan tucked his head into the space between Adam’s neck and shoulder, and Adam rubbed slow circles over Ronan’s back.

“I was supposed to be done with this shit,” Ronan said. “I figured I knew everything about myself by now.”

“I don’t think anyone knows everything about themself,” Adam said thoughtfully.

“Don’t you?”

“Fuck, no, Ronan. Yesterday I found out I like peanut butter on Oreos. It sounds disgusting, but Blue swore by it.”

Ronan laughed and shook his head. “You know what I fucking mean, Parrish.”

Adam wrapped his arm more firmly around Ronan’s shoulders. If anyone walked in on this, Ronan would never live it down.

“You don’t have to, like… have an answer right now,” Adam said. “You don’t ever have to. I know I told you to think about it, but if that’s not what you want, don’t.”

Ronan didn’t know what he wanted, so he curled into Adam’s side, because he did know that he wanted to be with Adam. It was one answer he did have.

o-o-o-o-o

After that, Ronan figured he might as well stop trying. Thinking about it hadn’t worked. Not thinking about it had been even worse, so he just left the whole thing alone.

Sometimes, it would cross his mind— _what am I—_ but he tried not to let it get in the way of his life.

Once, he found himself on the one computer in the Barns, clicking through a few of his dad’s old files, when he remembered those links Gansey had sent. He opened an internet bowser and sat there, staring. The little cursor blinked in the corner of the search bar, mocking him.

“Fuck you,” he hissed, and he started to type.

o-o-o-o-o

“You have a fucking _Tumblr_? Of course, you do. Goddamn.” Ronan was practically cackling, still peering over Blue’s shoulder at her laptop.

“Shut up, Lynch,” Blue said, slamming her laptop closed. “Not all of us live under a digital rock.”

“I really don’t need to spend time looking at fucking Supernatural gifs, Sargent.”

“Not what I use Tumblr for.”

“But you have seen the gifs.” Ronan moved past Blue and into the kitchen. Blue stood up and trailed after him.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you,” Blue said. “Gansey and I were planning to go into DC for pride. Are you and Adam coming?”

Ronan shrugged.

“I’ll knit you a rainbow sweater.”

“Don’t you fucking dare, Sargent,” Ronan said, grinning. “It’s June. You can knit me a rainbow sweater when it’s actually cold out.”

Blue laughed and leaned against the kitchen counter. Ronan opened the refrigerator and started digging for cold cuts.

“I’m making bracelets for Gansey and Henry,” she said. “Do you want one?”

Ronan hesitated. There was still a part of him, somewhere, that thought maybe this didn’t matter. Maybe he didn’t need a word for it, or maybe he was wrong.

But then, he might as well give Blue something to do with her time. He wasn’t even sure if he was going to DC; he could decide whether to wear it once he decided whether he was going.

“You can make me a goddamn bracelet,” Ronan said. “With the demiromantic flag.”

Blue nodded. “You got it.” She punched him lightly on the shoulder and scooted past him toward the pantry. “Hey, do you have any peanut butter? I want a sandwich.”

“I’ve stopped keeping that shit in the house. I’m trying to get Parrish to actually _eat meals_. He doesn’t seem to understand that a few spoonfuls of peanut butter is not a meal.”

“He’s not wrong, though,” Blue said.

Ronan rolled his eyes. “I hate all of you.”

Three days later, when Blue handed him a bracelet, Ronan figured there was no harm in trying it on. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for sticking around for 3000+ words of me working out my problems by projecting them onto fictional characters :)


End file.
